


first

by novembersmith



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/F, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Oral, Orgasms, Porn with Feelings, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:40:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5512484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If it’s the first time that is the worst, and it gets better after that, then I won’t—won’t you—I don’t want him to be your first,” Agnieszka is saying, hotly. She gnaws at her lower lip, staring down at Kasia, still clutching their hands together. Her face is blotchy and pale all at once. “Let me. I’ll—with you. Let me do this for you, with you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	first

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metonymy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/gifts).



> A missing scene of what-could-have-beens, set just after Agnieszka overhears Kasia asking her mother about wedding nights. 
> 
> Many many thanks to my beta (to be revealed later), who was invaluable! All remaining mistakes are my own.

Kasia takes Galinda’s words quickly but carefully with her into the forest, walking with measured step, as though they might spill from her. There is nowhere to run. She will overcome this, and carry it, and bear it somehow. This is just one more thing to know: the same as learning to bake, or to survive a hard fall from a tall tree, or to keep her hair clean and free and pleasing.

All her life, preparing to be pleasing.

She stops on the path that leads through the wood to the mountains. It’s cool, with the sun low enough that shadows and light fall through the trees in equal measure, and she is alone, the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes. She takes one breath, then another, ready to set the horrible words of advice aside for later. Each breath is furiously calm as she forces her jaw to stop trembling and her eyes to stop feeling so hot and so tight.

Then Agnieszka finds her.

She comes like a gust of wind, as she always does, blowing up leaves and the scent of forest about her—rich loam, ripe chestnuts, woodsmoke, the tartness of cold autumn air, a sweetness like apples. The whites of her eyes are so red and raw from crying they’ve turned the color of her irises to a brilliant steel.

“If it’s not as bad after the first time,” Agnieszka beings, lunging for Kasia’s hands. Kasia catches her before she can stumble or fall. Her friend, tangled and snarled and damp with sobbing, lunges down at Kasia’s face, so fiercely that for a moment Kasia doesn’t recognize the touch at the corner of her mouth as a kiss.

Agnieszka always kisses passionately—even the gentle kisses, the ones dropped upon a brother’s brow or a friend’s cheek, have a solidity and a weight behind the press of them. Sometimes _too_ much weight—one morning, Agnieszka had lunged for a hug just as Kasia had lifted her head for a kiss hello, and split her forehead while bruising Kasia’s lip. _Only you, Nieshka_ , Kasia had laughed, and kissed her bloody cheek with a hot, tender mouth.

The scar from the collision is still there, just at the corner of a brown eyebrow, silvery and small. Agnieszka is as tall as most men, and she sways towards Kasia now. Kasia remembers seeing Jerzy and Krystyna wed, hands-clasped, remembered seeing her brother bend down to kiss his upturned wife’s face.

She has never let herself think of marriage, of love, of anything other than the first October of her seventeenth year, and how to survive the ten years after.

Ten years without Agnieszka—a thought she can’t hold, that spills about her whenever she moves, that she’s learned to somehow live with and endure.

“If it’s the first time that is the worst, and it gets better after that, then I won’t—won’t you—I don’t want him to be your first,” Agnieszka is saying, hotly. She gnaws at her lower lip, staring down at Kasia, still clutching their hands together. Her face is blotchy and pale all at once. “Let me. I’ll—with you. Let me do this for you, with you.”

Shame and a tingling awareness of her body, both hot and choking, holds Kasia still; she had not wanted Agnieszka to hear her ask her mother those questions, almost more than she hadn’t wanted to ask them. She should have realized, though: Agnieszka was always turning up unexpectedly, exactly when least or most wanted.

Her body still feels hot and tight, too large for her skin, after the conversation; it had been all practical, ruthless discussion of intimacy, of places laid bare. Agnieszka had been outside, listening to all of it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Kasia says finally, and stares at their entwined hands. She was not raised to elide hard truths, though, so she adds, with a careful smile, “Or rather, I don’t know how you would.”

She cannot quite look at the fact of it closely—that if anyone could or would, it would be Agnieszka. The corner of her mouth feels achingly sensitive, cool against the hot flush of her face.

“I don’t know, either. But I’m going to kiss you,” Agnieszka says defiantly, and glares out from the tangle of her hair, bright sky eyes amidst the tendrils of auburns and bronzes and browns. “Properly. If I—oh. Ah. If I may,” she amends, and the maple-red blotches on her cheeks deepen and spread. “May I? Kasia, I—”

“Carefully,” Kasia says, attempting a smile, and gets a hand free to touch the scar hidden in Agnieszka’s hair. Agnieszka let out a little gasp, and takes a large gulp of the late September air, and then, not carefully at all, her eyes wide open, finds Kasia’s mouth with hers.

She’s more deliberate, this time, though—she aims well, and lands gently. Her mouth is badly chapped, and tastes of cool water, and apples, and the salt of tears. It might be any kiss between them, one of a thousand dropped casually and with easy love, except for how Agnieszka is holding her so tightly and pressing closer, how Kasia is clinging back desperately, her body shaking despite itself.

She never lets herself cling, or hide—it will only make it harder, later, she knows—but she lets Agnieszka push her back against a tree and kiss her again, over and over, blocking out the forest and the road and the future, just for a moment.

Maybe it’s just the number of kisses that makes it different—not a single quick touch, but a series of them, building upon themselves for the first time. It starts only with the press of their mouths, a caress, and then becomes deeper, as though they’re wading together, hand in hand, into a river.

“Kasia, Kasia,” Agnieszka says between kisses, nosing at her cheek, missing her mouth altogether at times and peppering kisses down her jawline, nestling one behind her ear. “Oh, let me—”

She keeps mumbling into Kasia’s mouth until a hot, strange feeling of daring or madness takes Kasia, and she takes Agnieszka’s lower lip between her teeth, less a bite than a pressing down, and feels more than hears the sound Agnieszka makes.

Their mouths are both open, now—this isn’t the same kissing as before, this is something different and adult, something deep and roiling that has Kasia finding Agnieszka’s hips with her hands and pulling her in tighter, that has Agnieszka panting and flushed.

“Mine,” she whispers furiously against Kasia’s mouth, biting down, and Kasia tilts back her head for it. She pulls back from the kiss to press their foreheads together, and she looks fierce and wild in a new way that catches Kasia’s breath. Then Agnieszka’s eyes widen and she’s herself, still—awkward and beloved and nervous, with a burr caught spiky and snarled in her half-done braid.

“Er,” she says, looking startled and helpless, and Kasia can’t speak.

Of all the people in the valley, in their village, it’s Agnieszka alone who has loved her without hesitation, or fear of pain. Loved her more than loss, open and vulnerable and true. The truest thing Kasia has ever known; if she’s anyone’s, it’s not the Dragon’s.

And suddenly, she wants this more than she’s wanted ever anything, for herself, for them. Not just as a last small defiance, though as that too.

She wants to roll in Agnieszka, drink the bright realness of her in while she can. She wants to know what it was to feel like a bride on a wedding night, beloved and fiercely cared for, and she wants—with a hot curl of jealousy—to be that for Agnieszka, too, to be her first, her one and only.

“Nieshka, yes,” she says, and pulls her in closer, Agnieszka’s slim, angled body pressed hard against the curves of hers. “But not here.”

“Yes? But not here, oh—” Agnieszka appears to realize they’re on the path, where anyone they know might happen by, and laughs, a honking inelegant snort, shaking her head at them. Her eyes are still red, and Kasia knows that Agnieszka is not, technically, beautiful—too tall, too slender, too wild, too rough—but she can’t imagine not wanting to look at Agnieszka’s face, can’t imagine seeing it and not feeling a thrill of love, fierce and hot.

She’s pulling Kasia through the woods, picking her way through bramble and thicket, humming, and her hand in Kasia’s is calloused, but still soft, and cool.

“Here!” Agnieszka says triumphantly, and they’re in a clearing that might be all their own, an autumn chapel of brilliant leaves, drenched in gold afternoon light. She starts, with a bright-eyed, blushing look Kasia’s way, to strip out of her lentik, her summer-browned body limned with light.

“What are we doing?” Kasia laughs, and licks her lip, going to help her as she tangles herself up.

“I’ve no idea,” Agnieszka says, and shrugs, bare-breasted in the autumn air, her nipples pale and peaked. Kasia, almost from outside herself, reaches out and touches one with a finger and when Agnieszka gasps, circles the impossible softness of it. Dreaming, almost, feeling drunk, she bends to kiss it, and Agnieszka’s hands find her hair, her cheek, her shoulder, and then tug wildly at her clothes.

“You know, I think we’ll figure out the way,” Agnieszka says, with a new rich, low tone in her voice that Kasia has never heard before. She likes it. Likes it very much.

It is an almost vicious kiss, but for the way Agnieszka keeps laughing into it as she tongues her way past Kasia’s teeth, the way Kasia can’t stop smiling. They both get tangled in their clothes, until finally Agnieszka somehow, in that suddenly deft, clever way she sometimes has, rips them all off. They arrange a sort of bed—a marriage bed, my one and only, Kasia thinks distantly, with a ring that feels true, like a bell in her bones—and collapse upon it.

“Oh,” Agnieszka breathes, her eyes wide, and for a moment all Kasia can do is look up into her face, beloved and familiar and suddenly strange, and new, with all their skin soft and pressed together, like the petals of the same rose. The sunlight covers them like a blanket; everything is warm, and soft, and sweet.

“Why don’t we do this all the time?” Agnieszka says wonderingly, and then stiffens and clasps Kasia to her with a wounded gasp, and Kasia knows she’s remembered.

“Hush, my Nieshka,” she says, and rolls them over, reveling in the easy way Agnieszka moves for her, pliant and pink. Their breasts brush with each breath, and the shuddery goodness of it is almost impossible to hold when Kasia rocks down deliberately, with no thought but to feel more of her, to press herself closer.

“Kasia,” Agnieszka gasps, and tangles their hands together over their heads, in the fire-bright leaves. She arches underneath the curve of Kasia’s body, like she’s asking for something. Kasia desperately wants to give it to her, wants to give her everything. It’s easy as anything to rock together, to find a rhythm with Agnieszka fitted between her legs, rubbing slick and hotter than the sun, than the summer, than a fire, but it’s not enough.

Agnieszka had thought of this, had started it, but suddenly it’s Kasia who’s wild for it, wants to be everywhere at once.

“Hold still,” she says in a ragged voice, and disentangles their hands. “Do that for me, Nieshka,” and kisses her way down the slender chest, the curves almost too delicate to cup, and then, when Agnieszka begins thrashing, breathing out her name shocked and tender, can’t help but bite down. She stares at the bloom of red on pale skin and can’t put a name to the feeling it sparks, doesn’t know it but knows it lives in her now, will be forever singing in her veins.

Without thinking her hand finds itself between Agnieszka’s legs, where her thigh no longer is braced, and for a moment all she knows is the hot softness of it, and thinks of fruit, of harvests. She bites down again, on another nipple, and strokes at that soft shuddering place Agnieszka’s opening for her. First with her whole palm, and then with just her fingers, tracing the folds, dazed at the wetness. Agnieszka shudders under her, and calls her name, and falls back to their bed of skirts, shaking and limp, wide-eyed and wrung out and dripping.

It’s not enough; there’s not enough time, and Kasia bites her careful, desperate way down Agnieszka’s chest, licks the apple-tart wetness on her fingers and Agnieszka whimpers and leans up on her elbows.

“I’m meant to be—to be, doing this with you, for you,” she says hoarsely, and Kasia smiles up at her, kisses the angle of a hipbone, and traces a wet opening with just her fingertips until Agnieszka is panting and scowling at her, rocking her hips up.

“Let me fuck you first, then you can try,” she offers, and smiles wider when she sees Agnieszka’s startled twitch at the vulgarity, how she laughs at herself after. She keeps dragging Kasia up for kisses, rocking her hips against Kasia’s wet fingers.

“Hurry up, then,” she moans and clutches and as ever, never stops moving, a river over rocks, a sky of wind and cloud. “I’m relaxed,” she whines, arching her back like a bow, and: “Please.”

Kasia watches, feeling almost outside herself. I will remember this moment for the rest of my life, she thinks, and slides two fingers inside, and bends her head to taste.

She thinks, later, that she must have imagined the smell of spring flowers on the wind that blew through, that there was music, and a soft light like morning. She thinks, later still, when she sees Agnieszka again at last, in the dead of winter, unfamiliar and dressed rich and strange, that it hadn't been imagination at all; that it made a great deal of sense.

But at the time, she thinks very little at all, only keeps her mouth where it is and drinks Agnieszka in, greedy, unable to stop herself until Agnieszka sobs and drags her up, arms insistent and body shaking like a new leaf.

“My turn,” she says, in between deep gulps for air, kissing Kasia’s face—her mouth, her lips, her cheek, her ear, her nose.

She tumbles Kasia onto her back, strong and intent for all the continued trembling, and looks at Kasia for a moment. There are probably leaf-sounds, and the movements of birds and small rooting creatures, but the only real thing Kasia hears is her own heart, beating strange and quick and hot in places it never had before—her throat, her fingertips, the place between her thighs, wet and dripping all this time, and now clenching helplessly untouched as Agnieszka looks down on her like Kasia’s the forest, and Agnieszka is learning the paths of her.

Angieszka looks up at her face at last and smiles, almost a smirk, and whispers, “There you are,” just before lowering her mouth, and each kiss is like another step, each swirl of tongue a berry found and pressed under the tongue. Soon, or not—time has slipped and fractured, and surely this moment can last forever, surely it will never end--Agnieszka slips three fingers inside Kasia, and Kasia can feel Agnieskza _humming_ , humming into her, licking a leisurely way between and in and around until finally she looks up again and smiles again, bright and happy and smug. She licks her lip and crooks her fingers up, hard, and Kasia comes apart.

She feels washed clean, like a spring flood, a torrent that’s left her dazed, and by the time she’s able to think again, to process sight and scent and sound, she realizes Agnieszka is in her arms, curled against and around her, and that she’s laughing, laughing so brightly and merrily it breaks something deep inside Kasia’s heart.

It will never be like this again, she thinks, and knows there is a door inside her someday she will have to shut. But not yet. Not yet. It’s still September. Please, not yet.

“For once, do you know,” Agnieszka crows, kissing Kasia’s cheek, her eyes dancing. “I’m not the only one who has ruined my clothes.”

Kasia, despite herself, starts laughing.


End file.
